Facebook Governance

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Permalink Reply by Seiiti on March 13, 2009 at 3:49pm

http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/jleeson/2009/02/27/facebook-governa...

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Permalink Reply by Keerti Nagappa on May 5, 2009 at 8:22pm

Hi Seiiti, here is another fairly recent article on Facebook Governace by Jonathan Zittrain.

In this article Zittrain points to that very reason that prevented me from exercising my FB vote ie Lack of Choice.As a facebook user I wanted to cast my vote, but something prevented me from doing so. I found a number of clauses in the revised "Statement of Principles and Rights" extremely worrisome. I refrained from casting my vote lest I should legitimize the process. The framing of the revised statement is still in the hands of Facebook and not the users, to quote from the article "It calls to mind the age-old trick of asking the children whether they’d like to wear their red or green pajamas to bed – with no choice about when bedtime actually is. Facebook still holds the quill and frames the choice."

I do think the celebratory tone attached to Facebook Governance should be meted with a cautionary note as well.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/e-pluribus-facebook

The social networking giant recently published “Governance Documents” which would give its users a vote – potentially binding, albeit in unlikely circumstances – in how it is run. Jonathan Zittrain notes this populous community’s move towards a form of citizenship.

Facebook boasts more than 200 million active users, with an astounding 100 million logging in at least once per day. Its prominence is not just in numbers of users. It’s what they do: many share intimate and sensitive details about themselves. That not only means that the service is susceptible to privacy panics (both real and imagined) on a regular basis. It means that, as with other social networks, people vest their identities in their profiles. If an account is disabled because of alleged misuse – such as spamming – the hurt can transcend the effort needed to create a new account. Even small changes, such as in the way the newsfeed works, elicit heartfelt reactions from people who think of their pages as … well … their pages.

We saw this phenomenon at work when in mid-February Facebook posted a set of what its management seems to have thought were minor changes to its terms of service – the kind of things that just wouldn’t matter to its users. Instead a privacy panic ensued, reinforcing larger worries about Facebook’s power.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg responded quickly – in plainspeak rather than legalese – and I credit his view that the changes in terms of service really weren’t meant to be a stealthy way of doing surprising new things with users’ information. But he used the occasion to offer an analogy:

More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world.

This encourages Facebook users not to simply view themselves as users but as … citizens. Citizens of Facebook. The consumer/vendor relationship – governed by contract and fair trade law – is different from that of citizen/government. Citizens identify with something larger than themselves – if one’s country is attacked, it can feel like a personal attack in a way that a fellow bank customer’s account theft does not feel like a personal invasion. (”Today we are all Bank of Americans” doesn’t leap to the lips.) And in non-authoritarian systems, citizens have a voice in the affairs of state distinct from the metaphorical vote a consumer makes with his or her feet – or that a shareholder makes in a quaint proxy proceeding.

Facebook has followed through with the analogy. In a rather unusual move it has published Facebook “governance documents,” opened them to public comment in a manner intentionally reminiscent of American administrative agencies’ notice-and-comment periods, enlisted law students to help process the responses, and now is putting a revised set of documents up for a vote.

This isn’t meant to be a one-off deal. Instead, there is a Facebook Principles document – translated into multiple languages – that expresses commitments to such things as open platforms and standards, free flow of information, universal availability of the service and its contents regardless of one’s country, and freedom to control one’s own data, including removing (or extracting) it from Facebook. The “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” has a most unusual section on amendments – usually the boilerplate piece of a terms of service that says that the vendor has the right to change the terms whenever it wants so long as it alerts users to the change. This one says:

If more than 7,000 users comment on the proposed change, we will also give you the opportunity to participate in a vote in which you will be provided alternatives. The vote shall be binding on us if more than 30% of all active registered users as of the date of the notice vote.

To be sure, these two sentences have loopholes suitable for a truck (and a missing verb which presumably is supposed to be a quorum requirement – 30% of all active registered users voting for a vote to be binding). 30 million users voting on anything (especially since it requires adding a new Facebook voting app) is a high threshold. More important, there’s no effort to identify what the alternatives will be. The current vote – on the principles themselves – simply asks users:

Which documents should govern the Facebook Site?

Choices:

The proposed documents: Revised Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Facebook Principles – 4/16/09 (These documents reflect comments from users and experts received during the 30-day comment period.)

Existing documents: The current Terms of Use – 9/23/08 (This document was developed entirely by Facebook and does not reflect any third-party outside comments.)

It calls to mind the age-old trick of asking the children whether they’d like to wear their red or green pajamas to bed – with no choice about when bedtime actually is. Facebook still holds the quill and frames the choice.But the fact is that most companies wouldn’t dream of going as far as Facebook just has, because the kinds of public pressures that create privacy crises can also be elicited when cynical choices are presented. Facebook has intentionally placed itself in a new zone, borrowing elements of .org and .gov to inform how a .com is run. Coming from .edu myself, I’m disappointed that something initially as academically-related as Facebook – a social networking site for university communities – wasn’t begun and nurtured under university auspices, naturally incorporating public interest values.

So Facebook draws from the public and public interest sphere, a simultaneously bold and modest step towards acknowledging that our new networked technologies deeply affect our lives in ways not always captured or best shaped by the typical template of consumer and seller. So I’ve become voter number 167,476 in the poll. (Yes, they say results will be audited by an outside firm.) I’m not expecting to add another passport to my drawer, but I’m heartened at the prospect that the amazing engine of private enterprise may find creative ways to tap into and reinforce our civic instincts.

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Permalink Reply by Seiiti on August 12, 2009 at 12:45pm

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/de-mock-cracy_in_action_facebo...

Following February's slew of complaints regarding Facebook's Terms of Use amendment, founder Mark Zuckerberg launched an "Open Governance" model and wrote, "If [Facebook] were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren't just a document that protect our rights; it's the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world." Today Facebook redrafted its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and while users / citizens have until August 18th to comment, we can't help thinking the system is a bogus democracy.

Sponsor

After a week of acquiring Friendfeed and launching a real time search engine, the blue nation appears to be growing at an alarming rate. In order to address the growth and new promotional ecosystem, notable changes to the Bill of Rights incorporate bans on citizen marketing abuse. Facebook hopes to stop spammers from overrunning the site and as pointed out by Inside Facebook, prohibit companies like Magpie, Twittad and Sponsored Tweets from starting profile sponsoring programs. Other marketing-related points included the phrases, "You will not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme" and "You will not offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes ("promotion") on Facebook without our prior written consent."

facebook_governance_aug09a.jpgAs citizens of this vast country, it's nice that we can smite the spammers and illegal pyramid schemers that plague our great nation. And then I remember, this isn't ACTUALLY a country. It's a company. If it were really a nation, we would know where we're supposed to offer our comments pre-August 18th and each of the "Rights" would have been spelled out separately as amendments to a pre-existing document. In fact, by now all of this info should have arrived in our mailboxes as a poorly designed pamphlet full of cheesy stock photography.

While Facebook's "Open Governance" redraft is an admirable attempt to encourage crowd sourced decision-making, it lacks the feedback mechanism to make it a success. Critics will argue that this is intentional, but it feels more like the system (or lack thereof) was rushed to the public after the TOS uproar in February. While this amendment to the Facebook Bill of Rights is a fairly tame one, consider joining the Bill of Rights group for future updates and leaving a comment. At this rate, if Facebook acquires anymore companies or services, you might find your entire online identity living in one social networking landscape. It's not like the administration is going to change, let's just hope a loud majority can usher in a better system.

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Permalink Reply by Godfred Ahuma on December 2, 2009 at 10:09am

An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg
by Mark Zuckerberg Today at 2:23am
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=190423927130
It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we've built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook's current privacy model revolves around "networks" — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we've come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We're adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we'll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You'll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you're finished, we'll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you're done you'll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We've worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone's needs are different. We'll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you're sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

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